I am one of those lucky enough to have known most of my
grandparents for most of my life. Some of the most enduring memories I have of
Nanna involve being with her in the kitchen and at the dining table, preparing,
eating, enjoying the food she let me help her prepare. I love food, I love
that she gave me this joy for food. I love her. Not so many years ago she
passed away, a few weeks before my other grandmother died. I was sad and
hopeless in my grief at that time, and it means a lot to me now that I can
honour her memory with what I am attempting.
I inherited some of Nanna’s cookbooks, and among them were two really
old exercise books which contained handwritten recipes from her mother. I was
thrilled by the discovery! These were ‘family recipes’, a connection to the
women before me. A connection to my Nanna who I know had cooked some of these
recipes. There are recipes named after my great aunties and
hundred-times-removed cousins, as well as family friends. I am looking forward
to discovering just how ‘Aunty Bessie’s Ice Cream’, or 'Mrs William's Sponge'
will taste. I’ve stumbled upon a goldmine of cakes, biscuits and puddings, all
passed down to me from my Nanna.
So, my plan has been to transcribe the recipes into a usable
format — some of the measurements have proved a bit challenging so far! How
does one accurately measure “a small teacup of milk”? I’ll then cook and
photograph the food with the grand idea that I’ll have a few copies printed off
to give the ‘The Cookbook’ to family and friends. This has taken far longer
than I originally thought it would, but here we are, getting to the cooking phase
of this project. Out of the 150+ recipes I’ve read and tried to imagine as a real
item of food, I've narrowed down to 60 those that will take up my kitchen
life for the next few months.
The first recipe I’ll post up later in the week involves a novel way to use leftover
mashed potato to make a cake!
5 comments:
Sounds like an interesting - and tasty - project. Good luck with it, and the blog, I look forward to reading more. I will happily volunteer as a taster - do you think the goodies would make it to Delhi in one piece?
Thanks Phil, great to have the feedback. It has been a tasty project so far, although not without some culinary disasters (more on that later...). How about I put you on the list for an actual book when I actually get it finished? You'll know by then that I've tested and tasted all the recipes!
Sounds like a plan!
I love that you are doing this. Just love!
Enjoy the adventure x.
This is such a lovely idea! I too have inherited cookbooks from my Grandma and Nan and they certainly present interesting challenges such as working out what 'bake in a nice oven' means! I'm looking forward to following your journey and hopefully sampling some of your baking too:)
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